About

CurbChecker is one person in Nashville who spent four weeks shopping for one used car on Facebook Marketplace, and got tired of relearning the same lessons every evening.

Why this exists

Buying a used car privately is a research problem disguised as a shopping problem. The listing tells you the year, the price, and the mileage. It doesn't tell you that the title is rebuilt, that this particular engine has a machining defect, that the transmission in that year was a known failure, or that the manufacturer will decline warranty coverage unless a specific software update was installed.

All of that is findable. It's just spread across recall databases, owner forums, complaint filings and repair records, and nobody is going to look it up forty times in an evening while scrolling. So most people don't look it up at all, and find out afterwards.

Curb Check does the looking up in advance and puts the answer where you're already looking.

The car that proved the first version wrong

Early on, the tool used one flat mileage limit for everything. Anything past it was a walk-away.

Then it told me to walk away from a 2007 Toyota Avalon — $6,000, 169,000 miles — which I bought anyway, because an Avalon at 169,000 miles is a car with most of its life still ahead of it. The tool was wrong, and it was wrong in the most damaging way possible: confidently, about a good car.

So the rule was rebuilt around what each model actually survives, and every car already in the database was re-scored against it. That's the whole design philosophy in one story: the tool is built by someone who keeps checking it against real cars, and changes it when reality disagrees.

What four weeks of scrolling actually taught

The engine defects and mileage math were the obvious lessons. One I didn't expect: sellers sometimes negotiate against themselves without meaning to.

Because Curb Check keeps a record of listings it's already seen, it can occasionally catch a car that's been posted again — the same vehicle, weeks later, at a lower price than the first time. Nobody advertises that their price is falling. When Curb Check has seen both postings, you get to.

What it will never do

Curb Check tells you what's likely to break. It doesn't tell you whether to buy a car, and it can't tell you whether this particular one has been looked after — only a person standing in front of it can do that.

A red verdict isn't a bad car. It's a car with a known risk, and knowing about it in advance is the difference between a negotiating position and a surprise. Plenty of people buy red cars on purpose, at the right price.

Why your cars never leave your computer

There's no account and no cloud. Every car you look at is stored in your own browser, on your own machine.

That's partly principle and partly engineering. A central database of what everyone's browsing would be a liability to hold, a target worth attacking, and a thing we'd eventually be tempted to monetise. Not collecting it solves all three problems permanently.

The trade-off is real and worth stating: your list doesn't follow you between computers, and uninstalling deletes it. You can move it yourself with the export button.

What's next

Curb Check covers ordinary, reliable used cars — the sedans, SUVs and minivans people actually commute in. That's deliberate. It's the segment where a bad decision hurts most and where the least good information exists.

The same approach applied to sports and luxury cars is coming. Different question entirely — not "will this last" but "which of these depreciated monsters is survivable and which will bankrupt you" — and it needs its own research before it's worth shipping.

Get in touch

Bug reports, a model you want covered, an argument about a verdict: admin@curbchecker.com. It's read by the person who built it, because there isn't anybody else. Maxbots is the company behind CurbChecker — same team, one inbox.